


Inching

by Tohje



Category: Star Wars Legends: Jedi Apprentice Series - Jude Watson & Dave Wolverton, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Domestic, Don't copy to another site, Family Feels, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Jedi lyfe, Master & Padawan Relationship(s), Mission Fic, Not Even An Inkling Of The Update Schedule, Probably Canon-Typical Violence At Some Point, Self-Esteem Issues, lineage feels
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-25 06:47:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20372446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tohje/pseuds/Tohje
Summary: They build an unit, brick by brick and, of course, with some severe setbacks.A series of vignettes over the period of Obi-Wan's apprenticeship, based on Audre Lorde's (A Burst of Light) active meditation as a form of self-control. There are six steps.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LuvEwan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuvEwan/gifts).

> This chapter is for LuvEwan.
> 
> Lovely outpastthemoat gracefully sorted this out and made it better. All remaining oddities are my own making.

_1\. Control of Thought_

_Think of a small object (i.e. a paper clip) for five minutes exclusively. Practise for a month._

“You will face the wilds like you were on the day your bearer gave you your life on this soil.”

It was a common practise, the one Qui-Gon had encountered on countless different planets in different shapes and forms. When members of the community - sometimes divided by their preferred gender, sometimes not - reached a certain age, an initiation, a test of skill and courage, took place. After their hosts found out that his padawan’s birthday had come and gone while they were traveling to the secluded village, they had offered Obi-Wan a place in the initiation, claiming that someone uninitiated walking among them would bring bad luck over their dealings. 

("_How come you don't have to be initiated, master? You are as unfamiliar to their ancestors as I am." _

"_Their ancestors recognize and honor the wisdom and hardships the Galaxy and training a padawan have already bestowed upon me." _

"_I think they recognize someone from the same age group, that's all." _

"_I think it's time for your morning run, big mouth. Make it double, just so that you will be prepared for your testing.") _

So, a group of fifteen-year-olds stood in front of the tribe’s elders in the first rays of the rising sun, the grass, wet with heavy dew, singing out in a prism of colors. Some were shivering in their underwear, without their shoes, either from the excitement or because of the crisp morning air. Others had trouble staying quiet, eager to start their journey, and to show off in front of their age mates. 

On the outermost edge of the group, a head full of short copper and sandy hair stood out in the sea of black, brown, and mossy green manes. His padawan stuck out as Qui-Gon stood among the proud parents, despite Obi-Wan being inches shorter than fifteen-year-old Karesshians. His coloring worked to his disadvantage in the wooded surroundings.

“You will carry no weapon, no clothing, no tool, no family sigil. The wilds will provide, the wilds will treat everyone fairly.”

Qui-Gon placed his hands on his belt. Obi-Wan’s saber hung safely next to his own; his robes and tabards and leggings were neatly folded next to his sleeping pallet in their little hut, his utility belt and a few personal belongings on top of them. His boots, recently polished, stood in the corner. 

“You will carry only our teachings, our ways, our knowledge, in your hearts and in your heads. Respect them, and the wilds will provide.”

Autumn wilderness, steeped in game and wild harvest, and a padawan who had attended all the mandatory surviving camps and passed them with distinction in spite of the constant grumbling before and after the courses (“Uncivilized, master. _ Mud, _master. Insects especially attracted to humanoids, master.”) Not to mention Qui-Gon’s few detours during their own missions. He was getting used to being reproached by the Quartermaster for the sudden spikes of water consumption in Jinn-Kenobi quarters, after his padawan had diligently suffered his master’s wanderings. 

A padawan so focused, radiating determination in the Force in the rapids of nervousness and adolescent strutting. Qui-Gon wasn’t worried.

*** 

There’s a saying in the Galaxy, stating that a Jedi waits for no one and no thing. For most folk, tightly stuck to the planetsides in the Outer Rim by the finances of space travelling alone, they certainly appeared so. Those rare, aloof warriors and mind tricksters descending from the stars and soon returning to them. Nothing touched them in their endless serenity, and they were bound to no family, clan, tribe or nation.

Yet Qui-Gon Jinn was well-versed in waiting. The will of the Force often took its sweet, sweet time before revealing itself. Katas resisted, negotiations stalled, parties hesitated, enemies hid and solutions refused to appear. Meanwhile, he knew how to keep himself busy. 

The message about their mission was spreading around the Karesshian settlements in the wilderness, and eye-witnesses were arriving to the main village like a slowly trickling stream, travelling in twos and threes. He and Obi-Wan had been sent to document and collect evidence against the corporation that had thought the remoteness of this sector would hide the ecological catastrophe in its wake.

The stories he heard and the photos they displayed at him - polluted water tables, disrupted migration routes, leaving the herds confused and diminishing and predators hungry - cast a waspish cloud over Qui-Gon’s mood. He found out he missed his young apprentice’s presence in the early morning hours. Perhaps that was why, on the fifth morning, when he rose from the subpar meditation, a small yellow band on top of Obi-Wan’s clothes caught his eye. The boy, his posh accent, his dry wit unusual for his age, his eagerness and his seriousness, they all manifested in the shades of yellow in the Force for Qui-Gon. Butterscotch when Obi-Wan was calm, polite, studying, shielded; goldenrod, in joyous flames and wild leaps in the throes of kata. Yellow-white sunshine in his small smiles.

It would be so easy to detect even the merest hint of darkness against all that _ Light, _and Qui-Gon felt disgruntled at himself when he thought those weeks - no, months - of mistrust from his part. Obi-Wan seemed to have come out of it relatively unscathed; though not allowing room for mistakes, his bar always a little too high, like he was constantly performing in front of an invisible jury. 

The boy was goal-oriented, and dutiful to the letter. But it wasn’t arrogance, it wasn’t over-assertiveness, so he let it be for now. He would have to keep being vigilant; he wouldn’t fail this one, not when the Force had deemed it appropriate to make that small sunshine of a smile _ his _ responsibility for some unfathomable reason. 

He would keep a clear, unbiased head this time.

He picked a small band up and slowly turned it over in his hands. The boy had taken an unconscious habit of tugging his braid, the band vanishing into his fist. Qui-Gon would have to wean him off the habit soon enough. Frankly, he was a little surprised Obi-Wan had left the band behind, but that was his padawan, following the rules with diligence which baffled him, and the band probably could have been counted as a tool. 

Had he unraveled his braid? Qui-Gon wasn’t sure how he felt about it.

Every morning, before other duties, some parents gathered in front of the shaman’s hut, and she came out and declared that all was well with the initiation group in her visions (Qui-Gon had quickly discovered that ‘visions’ came to her by the small aerial detector droid, which looked over the youngsters' camps - Karess might not be part of the Republic, but their way of life was more of a choice nowadays, and they didn’t refuse the benefits of modern medicine and technology when it was practical to do so.)

“You have taught your children well. You trust them. There are only a few things in these woods that pose a real threat to your people. Your shaman tells you everything is fine. Can’t you let go of your worry?” he asked one of the most loyal parents, a woman with more grey than green in her proud mane. She smiled at him, a little pityingly, a little playfully. “If my son asks, I’ll deny everything. He is to never know. His heart and courage will surely carry him far. And still the worry stays.”

He had inclined his head.

He checked the bond for the first time after that, on his way to the ancestors’ house in the middle of the village. He knew Obi-Wan saw the signs of himself possibly failing everywhere - little annoying spirits, all those _months, _Jinn, the Force had better know what it was doing -, and so Qui-Gon had refrained from his inquiries in these five days. The bond felt suffused and calm from Obi-Wan’s end; the boy was concentrating very hard on something, not in danger, and Qui-Gon retreated after a nudge, not wanting to disturb the padawan’s focus. He felt an answering, distracted pluck. 

No, Qui-Gon wasn’t worried in the slightest.

***

After a full tenday, the initiation groups resurfaced from the vast, surrounding forests, always in twos and threes. The watch duty greeted them with joyous shouts. A great bonfire stood at the central square, waiting to be lit the moment the last group would appear, dirty and smelling, grinning triumphantly. Moonshine was brewing, whole carcasses of gill-goats were roasting in the earth ovens and the pastry dough was rising nicely. An exuberant mood had settled over the village, infectious, and Qui-Gon found himself smiling at the familiar green-haired woman, who was now hugging her returned, whooping offspring. She found his eyes and answered his smile over her son’s shoulder, eyes shimmering. Around them, families gathered around the returned young hunters; backs were riotously clapped, and the ringing laughter was a mix of relief and pride. Qui-Gon smiled again, stepped aside and scanned the edge of the forest almost despite himself. 

Except Obi-Wan’s group, namely he and a small Karesshian boy, one of the youngest attending the ritual, didn’t come back that day. 

It was nothing unheard of; there might have had some minor delay. He spent the following night, heavy with the aromas of fresh chopped wood and freshly baked berry tart hanging above the village, in a light trance in case two boys would emerge from the dusk. Small, yellow band turned over in his hands, his fingers starting to recognize the patterns of the small wears and tears in the fabric. An image of his sleeping padawan, tightly coiled on his side, presented itself. 

The training bond remained quiet. He could sense his padawan on the other side, not in immediate danger but deeply distracted, focusing on something so hard that it had made him retreat very far in himself. <_Obi-Wan> _he tried a few times, carefully, knowing full well that breaking a concentration that deep in the Force could be dangerous, and wasn’t surprised when his padawan didn’t answer, probably didn’t even hear him. They had managed to speak over the bond only a handful of times. 

The next morning exposed only him and a young-looking Karesshian couple standing outside the shaman’s dwelling. The shaman, a middle-aged, round, regal woman came out with a small frown on her brows, and told them the twosome’s camp had been abandoned as one of the earliest in initiates’ intended return day, but now she couldn’t detect them. Qui-Gon stayed behind for quite a long time after the shaman had retreated with promises of keep on looking, listening to the young, agitated parents. Rhistip was their first born, shy and ambitious and a book-worm; he wanted to become a doctor or a scientist when he grew up, and they were trying to save money so that they could send him to school on the sector’s central planet. It was a hardship, and his siblings would have to wait their turn, and their house would probably remain uncompleted for the foreseeable future. The family’s hopes clung onto him. The boy wasn’t the outdoor type, but he had wanted to honor their ancestors before leaving Karess, and oh, mister Jedi of Stars, to infiltrate the initiation was the surest way to gain the ancestors’ anger upon their household, but if Tip wasn’t back by tomorrow they would say to hells with the ancestors and call a search party and - 

He reassured the nervously prattling father and quietly worrying mother that yes, he and his apprentice had a mind link, and that he had felt nothing especially threatening, although something _ had _clearly happened; the delay - and Obi-Wan’s sunken state, though he didn’t mention that to Rhistip’s parents - indicated that. When he left the square, the couple was leaning on each other, and other villagers were rushing to encircle them. 

Qui-Gon kept his retreating steps measured and level. 

The search party by tomorrow might not be such a bad idea.

Through the busy day spent in transcribing testimonies, he patiently fended off one concerned Karesshian after another. No, he wasn’t terribly worried. Yes, his padawan had survived far worse. Yes, they had this ‘special connection.’ Yes, he was quite sure that the ancestors understood, although he couldn’t say one way or another why they had decided to test his apprentice like this.

By sundown - breath-stealing in a way which only happened in a northern, unpolluted hemisphere in autumn, the air so glass-sharp it hurt the lungs and watered the eyes - Qui-Gon was --- _ annoyed _ wasn’t the right word. The Karesshians only meant well. The table of chiefs were worried about how this would affect their mission report - it wouldn’t, Qui-Gon had assured them - but they were also genuinely upset for Obi-Wan’s behalf. 

He was _ tense, _if anything; the energy of fatalistic waiting coiled tightly into his tendons and muscles. No time for katas, not in many days. He breathed the cold air in, in, hold, hold, hold, out. 

The planet was magnificent. Balanced, vibrant with life. Meditation should have been as easy and pure as the air here. 

He placed his hands on his belt loops, grounded himself, continuing the breathing exercise. Moving meditation, then. His thoughts were rotating the same orbits over and over again. His legs would carry him to new paths, new places to meditate, if he allowed something else to guide him other than his restless, conscious mind. 

His purposefully blank mind and wandering legs led him on the small riverbank marking the village’s northern border. The sand was heavy and slushy beneath his boots; the thin layer of ice crust had survived the day on the nooks and shadowy spots of the bank. The watch patrol greeted him with curt nods.

_ The boy had left that way. _

A wry smile tucked Qui-Gon’s lips. He _ was _acting a bit ridiculous. 

He was about to draw his saber - kata meditation would be a welcome respite, and most of the folk had retreated to their evening chores - when his hand skimmed and recognized a by-now familiar object through the fabric of the pouch.

The yellow band. Of which he had no memory of pocketing and taking with him into the day.

Qui-Gon stilled. 

People moved through their everyday lives like that most of the time; not registering their patterns if nothing disturbed their routine. Ask a person what color their neighbour’s jacket was that same morning, neighbours they greeted every morning on their way to work, and most of them couldn’t answer. 

Except that for the Jedi, tiny lapses like these were unusual in the middle of the mission, no matter how peaceful like this current one. Potentially dangerous. Little details like these, when slipping past unnoticed, often dictated the outcome of the whole mission. It was something that didn’t happen for Jedi in balance with the Force, aware in a way only the Light allowed. Qui-Gon had cultivated a deliberate ignorance of that awareness in those solitary, shallow years after Xanatos. But now he had become responsible for a padawan again. 

The sand was moist and cool, giving way as he knelt down on the riverbank. The stream chattered amiably at him. 

Round and round and round in his hands the band went, at an even pace; a focal point. He felt the patrol behind his back in the Force, their eyes on him, closed his own.

_ You must set a better example. Acknowledge it, and give it to the Force, so that you are able to protect, to guard, to teach, to bring peace again. _

Controlled breathing. The smell of the rotting bulrush and the uncomfortable feeling of his leggings slowly soaking through at the knees; the sensations slowly receded. He sank as he soared; the paradox of awareness in the Force. 

The acknowledgement, rising from the inside, where he didn’t exist as much as in words as in images, meant also accepting that a corner of him, layers of ice and frozen, dirty soil, had been behaving oddly for a while now, a direct opposite of this planet’s preparation for winter hibernation. 

How easy it had been to ignore the warmth, the brightness, when you got used to thinking that they were something separate from you. 

And the worry stayed. Even if you made the effort and gave it to the Force, determinedly, repeatedly. 

***

<_Master. Master. Master. We are coming. Rhistip is hurt.> _

He sprang up from under the furs, gasping a huge lungful of greedy air. The light was gray and foretelling winter, the primary star of the planet hiding behind the horizon line.

<_I__ can hear you padawan. Refocus.> _

Qui-Gon rose and threw on his robes on the move, grimacing as his fingers got stuck into knots of his hair. The village was slumbering on; only the bassrr lizards blinked slowly at the striding Jedi master from their perches on the gable ends of the houses. The bassrr yowled huskily at him.

The guard reaching the northern gate rubbed her eyes in a weary motion before she realized that the night shift wasn’t taking its toll, and there actually _ was _ somebody, cloaked and tall, next to the gate; Qui-Gon smiled at her briefly, reassuringly, before he returned to drill his gaze through the wooden double doors. The guard’s eyes rounded and she added things together rather quickly, considering that so far the night had been long, chill and uneventful. 

“I’ll ring the alarm,” she declared, turned and started to jog. She thought the early, subdued light deceived her first when she saw the Jedi make a small motion in the corner of her eye, but then the locked and double-checked gate groaned on its hinges and opened a fraction. 

Qui-Gon waited. The nearer his padawan got to the gate, the more clearly he sensed the boy’s state of being; tired, uncomfortable, possibly ill or infected. He sent a wave of energy along the reopened bond, and felt gratitude and bleak determination rushing back. 

Obi-Wan emerged from the gray daybreak not long after the alarm bell had brought half of the village to the gates and the doors had been thrown ajar, much to his padawan’s chagrin, Qui-Gon was sure. The boy looked positively feral: he had somehow got his short hair tangled with needles and glorious amounts of resin, and a set of mix-matched furs hung onto his slender frame, girded up with pliable, willowy twigs. Fish skins, filled with hay, were tied up around his feet. He pulled a crude stretcher behind him. The sight of the motionless bundle lying on the stretcher caused a joint gasp to rise from the crowd; in the back, an old woman began the first haunting notes of lament.

“He’s alive,” Obi-Wan panted. “There’s some internal bleeding which I couldn’t stop. I think the broken rib punctured something.” <_I’m sorry, master. Every time I tried to direct my focus elsewhere, he started coughing and seizing. I had- had to concentrate all the time- I couldn’t-> _

<_Don’t worry about it now.> _Qui-Gon had moved two steps ahead of the surging crowd, and threw his cloak over his padawan’s shoulders - somehow narrower than he remembered, those shoulders, rigid, holding up with the sheer force of will. Obi-Wan gave him a startled glance, but immersed himself in the robe.

“Come on,” he coaxed, urging Obi-Wan to let go of the poles as the midwives and the village’s barber-surgeon surrounded the bundle, Rhistip’s parents hovering over anxiously, all color drawn from their faces. “Their healers are here. They will send an emergency speeder from the capital. Rhistip will get to the medcenter in no time.” There was a nasty looking, infected bite at the juncture between Obi-Wan’s neck and shoulder; something with wide jaws had chewed a considerable chunk off of his apprentice.

That something was revealed to be a huge pack of predators far off from their normal habitat of the southern plains, driven more than half-mad from starvation and the stress of working as a pack, as they were solitary creatures by nature. “Rhistip fought valiantly,” Obi-Wan declared to the ring of chiefs sitting around him, their eyes gleaming in the smoky dimness of the ancestors’ house. “But we were both caught off guard, myself even more than him. I was away when the attack started. Rhistip concluded, and I agree with him, that Galomer conglomerate’s mining activities separated the predators from their prey herds, and as they work in a highly symbiotic, singular relationship, the disruption was immediate. They fought among themselves as much as against us.”

The boy swayed, just slightly, unnoticeably. He wasn’t especially gifted at healing, and several days of constant vigilance and his nonstop manipulation of the Force were showing to the master’s keen eye. Qui-Gon’s robe pooled around his feet. The village was a maelstrom of tumultuous emotions, the centre of the vortex residing in the surgeon’s hut for Obi-Wan. It drained the exhausted padawan when on a normal day, it wouldn’t have undermined him an inch. 

For Qui-Gon, it was something else. 

“Forgive me, chieftains,” he interrupted, too brusquely, and felt Obi-Wan curbing a wince at his side. “My apprentice has been through an ordeal. I would like to tend his wounds. If anything happens to Rhistip, I’m sure you will send a runner. This all will be recorded and presented in more detail to the Supervision Committee.” They all hummed in understanding around them. 

Obi-Wan walked like a boy made of sticks on their way back to their little hut, snapping and stiff. He stopped at the threshold, placed his master’s robe carefully on the rack, and then with a wrench, wriggled free of the smelling furs and darted inside. When Qui-Gon entered after him, deliberately banging around a little and bundling his robe, he found Obi-Wan staring at his folded clothes with a blank look on his face. 

“Sit down,” Qui-Gon ordered quietly. For a second, the boy looked like he might argue, but then he slumped down on the sleeping furs like someone had cut his strings.

The wound was foul and dirty, but not very deep, Qui-Gon found to his relief. Obi-Wan endured the sting of disinfectant stoically, his head bent away from his master, but his forehead glistened with a thin sheen of cold sweat. The bottle looked somehow even smaller than usual in Qui-Gon’s blunt hands. It seemed inadequate. Qui-Gon shook himself mentally, corked the bottle and returned it to his pouch, searching around for their bacta patches. 

“They caught me off guard,” Obi-Wan blurted, the voice muffled as he pressed his chin to his chest while Qui-Gon adjusted the patches. “I wasn’t paying attention. I wasn’t prepared for the unexpected.”

Qui-Gon thought of the bright color yellow, and the worries tackling even the most seasoned masters, unannounced and unexpected. 

“There’s a lesson in this, true,” he said, and tried something he hadn’t tried in years, not with himself, and therefore, also not with others. He tried to be gentle, and it was surprisingly easy, with all this yellow around him. “But all lessons need the right time in order for them to be accepted, and this is not the time. This is time for you to rest, padawan.”

He knew the boy was still jittery, still perceiving this mission as a severe lapse from his part, but Qui-Gon didn’t know what else he needed, feeling a sudden warning, not from the Force but simply from his guts to treat this very carefully. Words held back weren’t words causing damage. And Obi-Wan, dutiful, always ready to surrender to the Force despite his strugglings and emotions running untamed, let it go. His fall to sleep was instantaneous, almost somehow violent, like Obi-Wan had hurtled himself into the dream head on, recklessly. 

Later, when Obi-Wan turned his head on the pillow, Qui-Gon’s chest felt tight. The braid was a matted, dishevelled mess, twined and bound around itself into a hopeless knot, to prevent it from unwounding. 

*** 

The news spread across the village in the evening, and the bonfire was lit. Rhistip, son of Karess, would live and recover. 

The people gathered around the bonfire and sang; the singing was not beautifully harmonious, because they sang like they were happy. Obi-Wan woke up to the sound just as Qui-Gon was reaching out to shake his shoulder.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> outpastthemoat and LuvEwan, who both provide endless encouragement and amusement, did a tremendous betaing work, as usual. Thank you!

  1. _Control of Action_

_ Perform a small act every day at the same time. Practise, and be patient. _

“What are _ you _doing here?”

Obi-Wan startled. They had returned in the middle of Coruscant’s night cycle, and he hadn’t expected anyone to dwell in the Temple kitchens at this hour; it was too early for even the staff to get in. He hadn’t bothered to ignite the lamps, trusting the guidance of his senses and faint background glow of the electronic devices. The kitchens resided deep in the Temple’s bowels, windowless, cave-like, with tall, funnel-shaped ovens. Obi-Wan had moved around them, his steps soft, but somebody had clearly been watching him from the doorway; the lights snapped on along with the abrupt questioning. 

He had to be more knackered than he had even realized. 

He didn’t immediately recognize the other person at the entry, his mind offering him an image of Bruck for some reason. 

A Nautolan, maybe two or even three years younger than him, not ever a part of Bruck’s inner circle, just one of his more distant courtiers.

“Initiate Sulaf,” Obi-Wan said and warily inclined his head. They were away from the Temple so much that he had barely had any encounters with Bruck’s acquaintances.

The truth, and therefore Obi-Wan’s source of regret, wasn’t out, and if he had learned anything at his master’s side by now about the ways of the Galaxy, it was that a ringleader’s influence reached surprisingly far.

The initiate stepped into the room and shrugged with pursed-up lips, but his source of irritation seemed to be slightly off-target from Obi-Wan’s first suspicion. 

“Kitchen duty for you too, Kenobi? Guess master Jinn finally realized you should be treated like everyone else around here, huh? Some of us face the consequences of our actions, and don’t wriggle ourselves out of probation,” Sulaf continued, with an odd mix of pride and defiance over his presumed misdemeanors.

“I’m just borrowing a kettle,” Obi-Wan answered. They had come in late, only for Obi-Wan to realize their kettle’s fuse had somehow blown while they were gone. He knew Qui-Gon wouldn’t ask, not this late and the padawan - and the master too, by the look in his eyes - were run so ragged. So Obi-Wan had waited until he heard the fresher starting, and snuck out.

Now he realized belatedly that his tone sounded like it had in Jatemalal’s shanty town, when the suspicious gang members had blocked his way and he had _ had _ to get to his master, and he didn’t have _ time _ for stupid street brawls. _ I’m a minor nuisance, like a fly, _ his tone said. _ I’m not somebody you should pay much attention to. _

Initiate Sulaf definitely wasn't harder to convince than Jatemalal’s bought street thugs. It wasn’t mind manipulation per se; it just came to Obi-Wan as easily as breathing sometimes, convincing everybody that he wasn’t someone _ so _important that they should waste their time on him. It was more of a cast aura in the Force, of unnoticeability, of blending in. 

“Whatever,” initiate Sulaf waved his hand at him. “Some of us get to do things the hard way. Not everybody can have their own master Jinn as a cushion.”

A year ago, before Obi-Wan had learned what it was to carry heavier regrets, the words would have stung like a heated needle for more than one reason. But he had made a promise, after the Council had lifted the probation. Nighttime tussles in the kitchens simply weren’t an option anymore. Obi-Wan had to suppress a mortified giggle as he imagined how Qui-Gon would hear of him getting into a fight over something so irrelevant to his master as Qui-Gon’s supposed honor_. _

He remembered how Qui-Gon had marched to Jatemalal’s parliament after the treason had been revealed, without a backward glance, without hesitation, on the crest of the rebellious wave. 

Obi-Wan opened the cupboard, hands steady, found what he was looking for from the fourth shelf, turned and bid the glowering Nautolan a good night.

_ I did the right thing, _ Obi-Wan thought as Qui-Gon emerged from the master sleeping room, long hair damp and dark, draping on his old undertunic which he used only in their quarters. The surety felt good, simple. His master’s eyes eased from their closed, heavy look as they landed on the steaming mugs on the tray. “Kind of you, padawan. Thank you,” Qui-Gon said quietly before they sat down. 

***

“So what’s he like? Master Jinn?” 

He hadn’t spoken to these senior padawans in his life, didn’t even know their names. They were casually leaning on the wall on both sides of Obi-Wan and Bant, causing her to make a small, surprised sound. The Great Salle and it’s many tatami mats were full of noise and life that afternoon, several crecheling groups practising at once. Obi-Wan and Bant had been assisting one such group earlier. Sunshine fell like pillars into the large, airy room.

The echoing, free laughter of small children was something Obi-Wan had had a hard time believing even existed, after Jatemalal. No doubt his master had understood, and assigned him here. 

“Why do you ask?” Obi-Wan’s tone was polite and utterly bland, something else he had learned last year in addition to _ see-me-not-notice-me-not _Force projection. The Davaronian and human girls, seemingly the chosen delegates of the group, smiled at him. The Davaronian shrugged a little, her smile much more caustic than human girl’s. 

“He has been in and out of Temple for years, none of us good enough for him in his grief. Master Jinn was this mysterious, aloof figure when we were initiates, causing master Yoda’s few hairs to grow more white. Masters talk, you know, when they think we cannot hear them.”

“He was this unreachable model Jedi,” the human girl continued with determination on her round, freckled face. “We see you here in the salles. You are _ good, _ we all see it. He doesn’t seem to even recognize it. You work hard, and he barely even mentions you to the other masters, and they _ love _to brag about us.” 

“I see,” Obi-Wan opted to say carefully. “And you want to know about my master, because you think he’s been too...harsh? On me?” He side-eyed Bant, hoping to get a confirmation how ridiculous this all sounded, but Bant’s eyes were even bigger than usual, serious and luminous. 

“An awful lot has been going on around you. Explosive sort of lot,” a Zabrak boy, one of the oldest looking in the group, quipped behind the delegates. 

“You want gossip,” Bant stated. The human padawan flushed, just a touch. The Zabrak boy made a condescending, clicking sound with his tongue.

“We want you to know that you are one of us, even though you have been away,” the Davaronian insisted. Something personal was buried in the Force behind her; a flash of pointed, sharp teeth. “Even masters sometimes misstep. Master Jinn has found many of us lacking in the past.”

Obi-Wan primly straightened his tabards. “I can tell you one thing. My master is _ private, _and as his padawan, I have sworn to respect and protect that privacy. Good day to you.”

He bowed, and - he admitted this to himself later, as he was sitting in the Fruit Garden, trying to meditate but picking an acorn instead - stormed out from the salles just a tad dramatically. He acted prim and fussy when annoyed, his master had let him know a couple of times.

He had forgotten his stupid towel behind. 

Not annoyed. Angry.

_ Where were all of you with your concern when I was a spare initiate? _

_ And _ ** _not _ ** _ one of you. _

He was glad Bant’s master had summoned her immediately after she had followed him out on his metaphorical coattails, indignation and worry dissolving in her eyes - she had not been fooled, he wasn’t that delusional.

If Qui-Gon decided he didn’t want to talk about Obi-Wan with other masters, like the others apparently did, it was _ fine. _He didn’t want, didn’t deserve that much attention. He worked hard, yes, but he was Qui-Gon Jinn’s padawan, recently on probation; it wasn’t enough. If others thought Qui-Gon treated Obi-Wan a bit indifferently or harshly, well, maybe Qui-Gon recognized a very-nearly-lost-cause when he saw one. 

The acorn had been peeled into neat shreds. 

Calm, center, relax, hiding into the Force’s gentle heaves, into its placidity, letting it crash over his head. 

“Padawan Kenobi? Oh, I disturbed your meditation! I am so sorry, I didn’t find you at first!”

A breathless, young voice. Youngster of the Temple, not a crecheling anymore; a very recent initiate. All three of his eyes were blinking very rapidly at Obi-Wan, radiating excitement in the Force. The Force sensitive naelnut trees rustled around them, thrilled by such youthful flux of energy. When Obi-Wan had entered the garden, they had politely soughed a little.

“Padawan Kenobi sir, master _ Jinn _sent me. He said to tell you that the Mission Supervising Committee is requiring his presence this afternoon, and that he is asking that you visit Serttiili’s shop without him. He says you know what to purchase,” the tiny intiate recited, his words tumbling together in his haste, clearly excited about his messenger duty. The way he said Obi-Wan’s master’s name made him appear to be the most awestruck gentlebeing Obi-Wan had witnessed in a good while. 

The Creche adored his master, Obi-Wan knew. The very picture of Qui-Gon, emerging back to their quarters after an hour spent in the Creche, covered in crayon and puree, hair wildly disheveled and the look on his face peaceful in contrast, was very hard indeed to connect with the distant, lonely figure the older padawans had painted in front of him. 

_ He _ ** _is _ ** _ private, _ Obi-Wan thought. _ I know that I please him at least sometimes, because he smiles that small smile, that real one, which makes the corners of his eyes crinkle. They don’t see it; it’s not for _ ** _them. _ **

He felt ashamed right away, for claiming something like that for himself, for acting so attached. ** **

“Thank you, initiate,” he said, and from the way the little courier puffed at the title, he knew he had been right about his recent transferring. “I’ll let the masters know you performed your task well.” 

He was already half-way through the corridors, heading determinedly towards the Temple’s main entrance, when the rest of the message registered. 

_ Mission Supervision Committee. _

Jatemalal. He stopped in his tracks, causing the stream of Temple-dwellers to divide on each side of him. A master’s glower sent him forward again, the smallest drag in his steps. 

His master was in trouble. And he had deliberately excluded Obi-Wan, first to the crecheling training and then to the errand duty.

He didn’t understand what was going on. 

***

“I’m afraid we are completely booked-up at the moment. You can sit there by the window and wait. What did you say your household was again?” 

The clerk was perhaps five years older than Obi-Wan, and, by his self-assertive tone, recently promoted to his position. He seemed to take his rise among the ranks with much more self-importance than the little three-eyed initiate.

“No household,” Obi-Wan politely informed him. “I’m from the Temple.”

All the other times when he had visited Serttiili, he had been with Qui-Gon. Serttiili was a sophisticated, spicy-smelling tea shop located near the upper class neighbourhood. It didn’t bother with anything as tacky as advertisement, its clientele more long-term and loyal than an imprinted Wookiee. His master knew the shop owner - a steely-eyed Bothan lady - from the way back, as it seemed to be the case with half of the Galaxy’s population outside the Temple itself. 

Now the owner was nowhere in sight, and the assistant tapped his datapad, already looking bored after the revelation that Obi-Wan didn’t have any old-money name to back him up. Coruscant really wasn’t that advanced compared to the Outer Rim in many ways, Obi-Wan had come to conclude.

Qui-Gon Jinn was the opposite of picky about food, Force pity his poor apprentice, but he was particular when it came to tea back at home on Coruscant. Obi-Wan suspected it had something to do with his absent grandmaster, but he knew better than to ask. 

“Yeah yeah, could you provide your district. We need to know if your organization has any forbidden ingredients, or any special requests. I hope your supervisors have entrusted you with an accurate list if that’s the case.”

The clerk clearly mistook Obi-Wan as a page, and a slow one at that. Well, he_ had _ left the Temple in his crecheling training gear; modest, beige tunics and brown trousers, sturdy boots, unrevealing and unnoticeable all around. He had also fastened his braid into a bundle behind his ear earlier, where it was out of the way while assisting crechelings, and the clerk’s attention was more on himself than on his surroundings. 

It was way better than what Jatemalilsh people, especially servants and residents of the shanty town, had thought upon seeing him standing two steps behind the walking mountain that was Qui-Gon Jinn. Their pity, especially when their old, poor cleaning lady had started to sneak him snacks, had bewildered him at first. When the shanty town boys who were the same age as him had cast him looks between sympathy and repulsion, he couldn’t sense what his master thought of it, but perhaps that in itself was a clue. Qui-Gon had tightened his shields and shook his head at him, something grimly determined on his face, after Obi-Wan had finally understood their assumptions, and opened his mouth in horror. 

In some ways, Coruscant _ was _better. 

He shouldn’t grade, but as missions went, Jatemalal, situated right on the border between Mid and Outer Rim, had been a tinder-dry pfasskpile controlled by the corrupt upper class small in number, just waiting for the spark. The Force had felt sluggish, oily. 

His master had found that spark, overstepping their mission parametres by leaps and bounds with those Wookiee ancestor legs of his, leaving Obi-Wan stumbling after him. And now the Council was after his master’s blood. 

“Senate district. And my master sent me to purchase Alderaanian high mountain matcha from the Kadovania region,” Obi-Wan answered, looking the clerk straight into the eyes when realization dawned on the young man’s face. It felt uncomfortable, all of a sudden, this looking people in the eyes. He frowned. He had never been timid, like Bant. He was probably still off-balanced by his anger. 

He got the tea packet, excused himself from the shop with many well wishes and bows indeed, and rode back to the Temple along three different hover bus lines in the late afternoon rush. He was squeezed between a group of touristy, boisterous Besalisks, utilizing master Gof-ta’s calming technique, when, inevitably, the car stopped mid-air with a jolt because there was a traffic accident on the line ahead of them. The Coruscant natives groaned in unison with the car’s framework.

The Coruscanti sky was bleeding polluted oranges, purples and deep, chasm-like shadows in it’s typical overdramatic fashion by the time Obi-Wan finally reached their dim quarters, his master still nowhere to be seen. He plucked their training bond carefully, and received distant acknowledgement back; Qui-Gon was deep in meditation. He stored the matcha in the cold cabinet the way he had seen Qui-Gon do it, and scraped the last remnants of the common sapir leaves from the bottom of the jar instead. He prepared a pot and left it under the rosy tea cosy on the kitchen table, wondering idly if Qui-Gon would ever let him throw the garish thing out. 

The untouched pot, grown cold, still stood there the next morning as they rushed past it to get to their ship in time. Qui-Gon’s shake on his shoulder had woken him in the middle of the sleep cycle. 

*** 

It must somehow be his fault, Obi-Wan had come to a conclusion.

Hetephah was difficult to reach: they had to switch transportation three times, and still in the end, they were launched on the distant, uninhabited moon in an uncomfortable cargo shuttle. Their travel was quiet and awkward.

Years later, if he remembered Hetephah, he mostly remembered the color grey. Grey dust, grey plains, watery, weak primary star, grey ruins, and fallen, grey statues. Qui-Gon’s eyes grey and silent, turned inwards. Centuries ago, when there had been enough Jedi to guard every system and sector, Hetephah had been an outpost, a station for the Jatemalal system. The remains were fit to live in merely because Hetephah’s weather was as grey and unchangeable as its plains. Their tents flapped in the mellow, dusty wind among the ruins. 

They were sent here on the most frustrating reconnaissance mission imaginable: to survey and monitor the moon’s mother planet’s succumb into civil war. What had started on Jatemalal, what spark his master had found waiting, had ignited into full flare, uncontrolled and directionless. The Jedi had been ordered to retreat after the successful assasination attempt of the leaders of the rebellion. The whole system had been hanging on the verge of chaos, and Jatemalal’s unsuccessful uprising had disturbed it, leaving the Outer Rim crime rings scooping in to fill the power vacuum officially, no longer in the shadows. 

It was an important mission, their team responsible for determining when it was safe enough for the Order to attempt another intervention, and a subtle way to show the displeasure of the Council. And somehow, somehow it was Obi-Wan’s fault; Qui-Gon wouldn’t have kept his silence, wouldn’t have kept him outside, in the dark, if that wasn’t the case. Maybe they had found out that he had slowed Qui-Gon down? Maybe the Council had looked at his performance and deemed that he was still too untrustworthy, too unreliable for a dangerous missions like Jatemalal? 

And now Qui-Gon had to watch from afar how his hands’ work crumbled into violence and chaos. 

The best he could do was to stay out of his master’s way, so as not to damage things further. He snuck out of the tent, hand in hand with the muted, colorless dawn, taking care to rise even before his early bird master. He checked their fancy tracking equipment, intercepting and collecting and sorting the data traffic of the Jatemalal system and feeding them report after report; the only modern thing on the surface of this moon in centuries. He arranged the reports into neat piles in advance for his master, gobbled up a ration bar and grabbed a bucket from next to the tent’s entrance, heading upstream. 

Hetephah’s morning singers were as modest as the feeble gleam of the moon’s primary star; they remained hidden and quieted completely as he passed their nestings in the broken statues and stalagmites slouching on the ground. Even the stream was placid, not making any unnecessary fuss as it flowed over the round, polished stones. Obi-Wan felt like a clumsy and loud intruder as he sloshed to the middle of the stream, leggings rolled up to his knees, and filled the bucket.

He switched on the gas ring and made tea every morning, water fresh and cool, and slipped the cup at Qui-Gon’s elbow while his master leafed through the reports. Qui-Gon thanked him absently. _ See-me-not-notice-me-not _was working, and his master could do his work at peace, without Obi-Wan hindering him. He had never maintained the projection for periods nearly this long, but he was getting better at it. Eventually, the morning singers were ignoring him completely as he trod upriver, metal bucket swinging slightly in his hand. He spent most of the days staying out of sight, tinkering and repairing their field generator, which was something of a pain in the rear.

Then of course he had to go and botch it all. 

It had been a busy night, the machine beeping and blinking well into the late hours; Obi-Wan had lain awake, on his back, trying in vain to find some rhyme or reason among the transmissions. His master’s crooked nose kept whistling faintly on the other side of the tent; the cot and the dust made him snore more than usual. Qui-Gon had stayed up late, the hurricane lamp on the tent’s ceiling creaking slightly and painting his weary face with restless contrasts. 

So it was not his master closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose that got him off balance next morning, but a sudden, raw emotion leaking into the Force and glistening in the corners of Qui-Gon’s eyes. Obi-Wan stepped hastily backwards, going to apologize for interrupting, cup ready and steaming in his hands - and stumbled over the stacked datapads.

“Ahhh!”

The tea was scalding. The skin of his hands turned angry red and blistering; worse was that his concentration in the Force broke as well, snapping loudly like a loosened tentrope in the wind. Qui-Gon’s eyes widened.

Qui-Gon unceremoniously grabbed Obi-Wan’s collar and hauled him outside, making Obi-Wan kneel next to the bucket and immerse his hands into the remaining, blessedly cool river water. His hand rested on the back of Obi-Wan’s neck, grounding and warm. Neither of them spoke before Obi-Wan’s fast, light panting slowed down to the more regulated breathing. 

“How long, padawan?”

He was tempted to feign a misunderstanding, just for a second. 

“Few times on the missions this last year. Once on Coruscant, after Jatemalal. I had to get out from the tight spots. Make myself harmless,” he forced through his teeth.

“And how is this a tight spot then?” The timbre in Qui-Gon’s voice was deep and calm, his hand on Obi-Wan’s neck heavy. It was blasted impossible to interpret anything when all he saw was dry grass, swirling clear water and his own throbbing hands and arms at the bottom of the bucket. 

“I didn’t want to disturb you. Jatemalal...this mission...my probation...it would be easier for you, master. I swore I would make it easier!” Oh, this was all a mess, tight and thick like an acorn stuck in his windpipe, making it hard to breath for the pressure.

The hand left his neck. Qui-Gon sat down next to him on the colorless grass, a bit heavily, not with his usual leonine grace unnatural for a man of his size. “Look at me, Obi-Wan.”

It was as if Hetephah’s gravity had suddenly decided to double its impact, making raising his head a chore. 

Eyes grey-blue and clear and cleansing, like river water, met him. 

“Your apprenticeship, _ any _ apprenticeship, isn’t supposed to be _ easy _ for the master. You are supposed to _ learn _from me. Tell me, is learning easy?”

“...No.”

“No. It’s difficult and frustrating and rewarding and joyful. So is your apprenticeship to me.” Kind, kind eyes, the wind whispering through the grass, the throbbing in his hands gradually easing. “You can’t learn if you conceal yourself from me, padawan.”

“But master, isn’t that what _ you _have been doing?!” A squawk burst out, old and fresh hurts speaking with his mouth before he even had time to be mortified. The water sloshed in the bucket, heaving with his indignation. “With the Council and Committee? I don’t know what’s going on. Was Jatemalal some sort of a test from the Council’s part? Are...are you in trouble because of me?” He didn’t have words for another kind of hiding: why are you keeping yourself apart, an enigma, quiet about everything? 

Qui-Gon sighed, and folded his hands on his lap. It really was quite unbelievable, Obi-Wan thought, cold sweat drying on his face and him feeling ridiculous crouching here, how Qui-Gon managed _ dignity _while sitting cross-legged on the ground in the middle of their small camp.

“If my old master would catch you questioning my acts like that, he would no doubt scold me most severely for the lack of discipline.” Qui-Gon’s smile was dry, humorless. “Padawans should trust their master implicitly to know what’s best, what’s theirs to know and what’s not.”

Obi-Wan bowed his head, chastined and horrified. To even think that he wouldn’t -! “I apologize, master! Of course I-”

“_However_,” Qui-Gon continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted, “as I’m not my master, I realize that these last months and my actions have caused lingering...misgivings, from your part. Rest assure, padawan, that if there’s a test, the Council will tell you. _I _will tell you. Jatemalal wasn’t a test.”

Obi-Wan pulled his hands from the bucket. The water dripped from his hands, almost like his infected skin would be weeping. He dared to look at his master. Qui-Gon’s gaze was on the horizon line. 

“Jatemalal was awful. All those people. But I _ did _slow you down. You could have done so much more,” Obi-Wan said, determined to come out clean.

Qui-Gon sighed again. The wind sighed with him, stirring his hair. With his broken nose and cragged face, he could have been one of Hepephah’s old, eroded statues, except that he refused to lie haphazardly on the ground.

“Jatemalal was, is, suffering, but you honor me gratuitously by thinking that one man alone can stop the war, if the conflict is truly desired. After the extent of corruption was revealed, I saw the slim chance and took it, when we found out about the resistance movement. They were going to do what they were going to do with or without us. The responsibility of giving up peaceful negotiations is the master’s, always. The Council was...dissatisfied, that I didn’t see things clearly and retreat sooner. They might -” Qui-Gon stopped, and frowned, silent for a moment. Obi-Wan hold his breath.

“They think I let my compassion rule my decisions, something they have accused me of doing several times. I wanted you… not to be a part of that.”

“They deserved a chance of change. There was so much unfairness,” Obi-Wan said. He raised his chin. “It was our responsibility to try and correct that. I wasn’t going to step aside from _ that. _ I wanted to stand beside you.” 

This time, Qui-Gon’s slight smile was more genuine. He ruffled Obi-Wan’s hair. “You have plenty of time to get your reputation tarnished when you are a little older, your latest probation not so recent and the mission not quite so twisted.”

Obi-Wan met his gaze steadily. “I must insist, master.”

Qui-Gon guffawed, short but loud. “Well, padawan, if you _ insist. _ ” He got more serious. _ ” _ I must in turn demand a promise that you never use that particular technique again. The Force shapes and resides everything in you. Can you see how it has already affected your behavior, how you brood and get tangled up in your thoughts? Let yourself be convinced that you are the source of all trouble, make yourself smaller? We _ are _but blades of grass, padawan, even if I sometimes seem to forget that. The wind blows, and our deeds are no more. Only the Force is. This is our consolation. Why the Force deemed that the Light should not prevail yet on Jatemalal, we do not know.” He stood up, and lifted Obi-Wan firmly to his feet. “We will get some bacta for those burns, and then you will meditate on this, padawan, all day if you have to.”

“Yes, master.” He might be a blade of grass, but Qui-Gon more often seemed like the wind, scouring and unrelenting. It really was like master Uvain had told him, over and over. His master was lousy at giving up on people and things he considered his own personal failures. 

And that was the very thing he really had wanted to protect his padawan from, hadn’t wanted Obi-Wan affected by it, when he had excluded him, Obi-Wan suddenly realized. The release had taken Qui-Gon far longer than a day. 

He had to swallow the realization down. It hurt, the acorn in his windpipe jumping. 

“And Force forbid, don’t ever let master Dooku know you were using Shadow techniques at your age. He would be intolerable,” Qui-Gon muttered, turning back to the tent. Obi-Wan felt a shimmer of curiosity, but there were certain limits how much you could _ insist _with his master within one day. Then, something else crossed his mind. 

“What do mean, my _ latest _probation?!”

His master’s turned back oozed amusement. 

*******

Weeks later, weeks that had been laden with released grief, and finally, with fragile hope, Qui-Gon was instructing Obi-Wan with the proper use of _ chasen _over the preheated bowl. The matcha smelled like the plains after rain, and his master’s eyes were crinkled.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heartfelt thank you for outpastthemoat for taking a quick look at this! 
> 
> Well, after months of teeth-pulling and shins-kicking, here we are.

_3\. Control of Feeling (equanimity)_  
_Become aware of feelings and introduce equaminity into experiencing them - i.e. be afraid, not panic-stricken._

The halogen lamp on the ceiling cracked approximately every 17.2 seconds.

Obi-Wan knew he shouldn’t have stalled at the ship’s med bay for such long periods that he could calculate the pattern. Not within the current mission parameters. It wasn’t constructive in the least.

He wasn’t sure why this particular detail had caught his attention; Aghan Pride’s infirmary was a cluttered place. Arrhens’ family units were large, raucous, and closely knitted, and they refused to leave the wounded alone. They had crowded - well, camped, some of them by the look of it - outside the oxygen chambers for days. His master’s corner was a small, quiet boat rocking on the restless sea of noise, no matter the time on the ship’s artificially modulated day period.

Arrhens were worried and afraid. Theirs was the instinct to puff up and get loud and demanding at the Republic’s doctors’ faces when scared, and so the decibels rose.

His master was stone-silent compared to them. The lamp outside Qui-Gon’s little room - or more like a cupboard - flickered at maddening accuracy, measuring up the time Obi-Wan stood on the other side of the small transparisteel window, limp hands hanging on his sides.

It was a good thing that Qui-Gon was so quiet, Obi-Wan told himself. It meant he was either asleep or under a trance, saving his strength, gathering his wits. Healing. It meant healing.

But then he had allowed himself to end up here again in the smallest hour of the morning, in tandem with the nurses’ shift change. He could check in. The rest of the ship was on their bunks, trying to catch some fitful sleep in spite of the catastrophic event, he had told himself.

The nurse had come out of Qui-Gon’s room in protective gear which made them look detached, foreign. The blood on the tray was bright, obscene red, a stark contrast to the ceaseless, medical lack of color around him. The dish was full. Next to it lay a suction tube, limp and wet.

The gases continued to wreak havoc on his master’s lungs.

He remembered - although later he couldn’t believe he had done something so unworthy - turning his head to the side and briefly closing his eyes against the sight.

He decided that officers of the Republic could after all use his help when guarding the larboard upper corridors.

The sound of the cracking lamp followed him through the depths of the behemoth that was _Aghan Pride_. The corridors were deserted and all the dimmed, fluorescent lights were in perfect working condition as far as Obi-Wan noticed.

***

**Eighteen days earlier**:

The raised corner of Qui-Gon’s mouth promised a verbal jab imposed on his long-suffering, ever-patient apprentice.

“Are you sure you brought enough reading materials? I mean, the vessel seems sturdy enough, considering that the fleet is meant to move a small civilization, but that weight on your back would distort the orbit of a lesser asteroid. It _is_ only thirty days, give or take.”

Obi-Wan huffed and made himself stand a little straighter despite his rucksack. “More like bandits settling down, master. If the Republic wouldn’t have offered them the settlement rights, the Arrhens would still be skulking around the Takodana system.”

A sudden flash in Qui-Gon’s eyes told Obi-Wan that he had toyed too close to the line. His master would soon reprimand him for his ‘snotty attitude towards life forms which didn’t fit in Obi-Wan's perception of orderliness.’

"In any case,” he continued hastily, feeling the tips of his ears getting hot, “Arrhens are known to reconstruct their lives around astoundingly vast and time-consuming oral folklore and rich ritual calendar. We can expect that they will be occupied. Our presence here has more symbolic value than anything else."

Qui-Gon’s look on him was as flatly unfooled as his voice. "So you thought you would have time for studying on this journey? Because uprootings of societies are known to be peaceful affairs."

"Well, the contract between them and the Republic is solid and holding and wrought with an actual diplomatic skill for once, captain Khrallt is qualified and -"

"This is about Mpelhoven V, is it not?"

"I don't deny that it backfired my schedule -"

"Padawan," that blasted half-smile again, "I order you to make at least three friendships among your Arrhen agemates during this trip. Plus five more casual acquaintances of your choosing. Your mission is to learn their side of things."

Obi-Wan could feel his mental hourglass doubling its speed. “The Jedi are supposed to be neutral and dignified peacekeepers of the Republic in their eyes. I don’t think joining the bedlam that is Arrhen youth clans fits the agenda, master.”

“Tell me, how is Rhistip doing these days?”

“...Getting ready for the entrance exams to medical school next spring. The family sends their warmest regards.”

Obi-Wan knew better than to mention _his_ upcoming evaluations looming ahead of him the next time they finally reached Coruscant again. Their estimated returning day had unceremoniously whooshed by somewhere between Mpelhoven II and III.

“Don’t give me that face, _Shokti_,” Qui-Gon announced breezily over his shoulders, which definitely didn’t have to feel the weight of defending the lineage’s good academic name. The people of Mpelhovens had been an avian-humanoid race so tall and lean they made Qui-Gon Jinn look positively stubby. They had also become attached to master Jinn’s “tiniest” companion for some unfathomable reason, and nicknamed Obi-Wan with a word that meant ‘pocket-sized’, although the word lost most of its nuances over the translation process.

His master had embraced the diminutive with unholy glee unfitting for a Jedi, in Obi-Wan’s opinion.

He rolled his shoulders under the rucksack’s straps and followed Qui-Gon up the ramp, noticing the first queues forming between the fleet’s sister ships.

***

_You brought us here to DIE!_

The fresh red paint of the graffiti on the main corridor’s wall was glistening. The rumours circled the massive ship, much faster than a Jedi padawan could run his nightly patrols: _Aghan Pride_ wasn’t going to reach its intended settlement planet for Arrhens after the hyperdrive breakdown. That had never even been the Republic’s intention. They were going to leave the Arrhens to drift here in the unknown, uncharted space without communications or spare energy besides the emergency generators all eternity until the massive nuclear engine failure took care of their problem. Or the gods were punishing them from abandoning the old way of life. That none of the Republic’s representatives, no officer or crew member or doctor - except their one older figurehead - had been part of the catastrophe, was the proof. There was a secret plan to save the Republic citizens, and only them, after they had worked as decoys. They adamantly refused any out-going messages for help, for the fear of deception and abandonment.

Of course, it must be the sneaky, expensive backstabber tactic they think either we or the gods are going for, Obi-Wan thought. He winced inwardly as the caustic edge of his thoughts cut in.

He didn’t get enough sleep or meditation, with all the nervous night patrols he was assisting.

(He wouldn’t have slept anyway.)

(The doctor, on the other hand, had seemed ready to fall asleep on his feet.)

There were two new patients crammed in the same oxygen cupboard with Qui-Gon next time Obi-Wan visited him in the middle of the night. None of them were conscious.

The Arrhen family keeping watch in front of the nearby cubicle snored in one big pile. Their snouts made loud, whistling sounds that were vaguely familiar.

Obi-Wan looked at them carefully for a moment, and then leaned his forehead onto the cool transparisteel.

His master looked ridiculous; the oxymizer moustache was supposed to cover his real one, but somehow Qui-Gon had gotten it askew. The urge to unlock the door with the Force, to step in and set the equipment right hit Obi-Wan. The ship floor lurched under him. His breath hitched.

He, now the sole representative of the Jedi and the Republic, acting so irresponsibly was the last thing needed in the volatile situation. He was to be the bedrock, unwavering, calm; it was bad enough that the more authoritative, “the real” Jedi had fallen for the accident. The Republic officers were jittery, not listening to him in the meetings and yet demanding solutions. The repairing work was slow, the melted areas unstable and dangerous. They drifted and drifted, and space watched.

The Arrhens saw their auguries and ill omens everywhere, and who would blame them?

“They are so afraid, master,” he confessed to the transparisteel window. “And I don’t know how to make them not to be.”

The lamp on the ceiling measured the seconds he stood there, useless and duty-bound, his breathing catching and faltering in the rhythm of the haywire light.

_How can I make them be something I myself am not._

***

**Fifteen days earlier:**

The smell of gun oil reached their cabin before Qui-Gon stepped in, telling Obi-Wan that his master had spent this evening also in the close company of the Arrhenian conclave of captains. He soothed uncertainties and mediated disputes over their future. Obi-Wan wondered if the Arrhens would change the conclave’s name, once they would reach the planet-side and settle down more permanently.

He jumped from his bunk, stumbling over notes and datapads. He clasped his hands behind his back and stood his legs slightly apart. As always, when he took the position that indicated that he was ready to dissect his performance, a small ripple of nostalgia passed through him. The ghost of master Yoda’s gimer stick touched the backs of his knees, guiding him to the more relaxed position as his mind opened alongside his body.

If his master gave him an extra assignment of _making friends_, like shooing him off to the playground, furthest it be from Obi-Wan to deny him the detailed reports of his progress, no matter the lateness of the hour or the trials of the day.

Qui-Gon shrugged out of his cloak, stretched his arms above his head, groaned from what seemed the bottom of his stomach, and threw a knowing glare at his attentive padawan. “What have you learned today then, besides your academics?” he asked. His tone didn’t betray a hint of any other feeling than one of the benevolent teacher.

It was still a tie.

Although Obi-Wan suspected he had been lured in from the start, since games were Qui-Gon’s favoured methods of teaching, something that younger, desperate-to-prove-himself Obi-Wan hadn’t realized until later.

Because he was learning. Even among the young, who were generally uninterested in “ancient times” and more than eager for the adventure, the stories he heard, of heroes and defeats and raids and honor, painted a very different picture of Takodana’s history than the Republic’s official records. They told a tale of losing homes and space provinces against a more advanced, aggressively progressing enemy. They talked about contempt and shunning, and forceful re-education. All of this was quite a faraway thing from the Republic he and Qui-Gon represented today, but for the species with Arrhens’ collective memory, it was a string of violations impossible to ignore.

Arrhens had chosen what they perceived as freedom instead, the way of space nomads and raiders. The ever-stopping cycle of smaller and bigger skirmishes had run its course ever since.

When Obi-Wan reported his findings and conclusions, he didn’t quite know if he was annoyed or embarrassed by the way his master’s moustache quivered. “I want you to ponder,” Qui-Gon said then, his expression shifting to understanding smile, “when is the time for justice and when for placation, and is it possible for both to co-exists."

"But not this evening, and no homework either with the lights on,” he hurried to add when Obi-Wan was already shifting his weight to move into a meditation pose. "You have been working nonstop one way or the other since boarding this ship. Time for a rest, padawan."

“I don’t mind, master,” Obi-Wan assured. It was a lot, it was, their recent tour so extended and all his course work piling, and all the keeping up appearances and posturing this mission demanded, but he would handle it. Even the appearance of bias would be dangerous, Qui-Gon had warned him. He had gotten used to it, after first years of diplomatic missions with his master, but not usually this long and with this much responsibility.

He _would_ handle it, both here and back at Temple.

"But I do mind," his master grunted while sitting down on his bunk and removing his boots. "Running yourself ragged gives you no extra credits, Shokti. Besides, this headache is persistent."

Obi-Wan frowned. Qui-Gon's moves were stiffer and slower than usual. But as he opened his mouth, Qui-Gon raised a challenging eyebrow. He settled for collecting his master's haphazardly heaped shoes and storing them next to their cabin door.

Much later, when he was raised from the disturbing dream (he had sitten on master Mathieu's astrophysics exam and all the equations were suddenly illegible), he noticed two things while he blinked the sleep away in the dim cabin. One, Qui-Gon snored, loudly, not just his normal faintly whistling nose; his rumble had probably woken Obi-Wan. Two, his master had tossed his covers aside and muttered in his sleep.

Bleary-eyed Obi-Wan rose from his bunk, sidestepped his datapad stack, and draped an extra blanket over the large man before collapsing back to his own couch.

A few days later he berated himself mercilessly for not focusing on the moment: Qui-Gon was never a restless sleeper, not in space or indeed anywhere. And Obi-Wan had become proud, hadn't he, thinking that the Unifying Force only reached out for him in warning, that Qui-Gon was so steeped in the Living side that the prescience didn’t even bother with his master anymore. Obi-Wan regretted it even more when his master shouted at him to run to the opposite direction from where Qui-Gon himself was heading; Obi-Wan's feet obeyed the order before his mind recognized the unusual, alarmed tone in his master's voice.

***

**Nine days earlier:**

Crimson lights were flashing, flashing, flashing in sync with the warning sirens. His master in the cot under the red lights, carried by three strong Arrhens, appearing from the midst of smoke and yells. Too quiet. Too still. The bars of red lights cutting the air and smoke.

The Force hit him with such precognition that he felt like he had been smashed against the wall when in truth he just leaned against it and slid down as his legs refused to work.

_You will see red bars of light again, and your master laying under them._

***

Where does the fear live in the body?

Obi-Wan had to meditate.

(They continued drifting, and the engines didn’t come back to life. Twenty thousand living souls against the vast, uncaring nothingness.)

(Red lights still flashing every time he closed his eyes.)

There was a block as concrete as durasteel between him and the Force's guidance. Something in him fought back, refused to absolve and surrender.

Every initiate learned their body and its reactions through and through. The exercises were repetitive, sometimes embarrassing, sometimes mind-numbingly boring. Obi-Wan knew, intimately, the way his bowels worked, the run of his veins, the forming of calluses on his soles, his personal tics and tells, the way he still sometimes ground his teeth without conscious thought.

He settled down. Blessed quietness after the latest gathering, the conclave paranoid, screaming accusations at the Republic, the officers getting more and more on the defensive. The cool ship floor quiet also, but disturbingly so, no low groans and murmurings of the working engines and nuclear cores hurtling them through the unimaginable distances.

Hands placed on his knees, palms up. Eyes closed. An almost-whisper among the quietness - _“Centering around anxieties again. Relax your face. You get worry-wrinkles before your twentieth life day.”_

He had to scrunch his nose and mouth even tighter for a moment, feeling how the small, complicated muscles worked, restrained.

So. Where in him the fear had taken root, resisted, held him from the solutions, and clouded his vision of the Force’s will?

Obi-Wan methodically combed his body. This was familiar, this was practised.

Thighs? Tauten, yes, but more from the lack of saber practise than from anything else. A symptom, not a cause.

Arms? Feeling the weight, yes, the weight of expectations and failure, yes. But that too, more of a symptom than a cause.

His head? Getting thick and tarry for the lack of sleep, and, impossibly at the same time, whirring like a disturbed beehive; calculating solutions, distances, reserves. Wounded. Dead. The ones yet to be saved.

Yet, the source of all that racket was somewhere deeper. That was bluff, all this noise in his head meant to cover something more vicious, more fundamental. The root cause.

His heart?

Master Yoda smiled upon him. On any other creature’s face, the look would have been condescending. Humans and their mischief-making hearts, and their erratic beatings:

_Him gone. From me. Too soon. Him gone. From me. Too soon. Him gone. Too soon. Him gone. Under the red lights._

The root cause. The source of unbalance and fear: he was more scared than he should be for one of them. Raising one of them above the others, others the one had sacrificed so much to protect.

_“Give it to the Force, padawan. Recognize it, accept it, and then let it go, and the Force flows back in its place. All you have to do is to be carried.”_

Obi-Wan took an unusual deep breath amid the even, regulated meditation inhales and exhales.

_I let my fear go. My fear doesn’t define me, it merely shows I’m holding something in great importance. I value something, but I also let it go._

The Force stilled, and then nudged. There was something there, becoming. He followed, and the currents heaved and tugged, and finally pointed him in the new direction.

_A way to save these people?_

The Force seemed to shrug. There might be, it seemingly said. If you know how to name it, how to value it.

_This is...not what we are taught. I don’t...I need guidance. I don’t understand. I’m not to have this kind of attachment._

Another ephemeral shrug, something fizzing below the surface.

Look it differently, name it differently, tell it differently, and you can save these people.

_I...can’t. It’s what we are taught to avoid at all cost._

A way to save these people.

Obi-Wan’s throat was parched by the time he finally surfaced, causing him to cough drily. It was late, his internal clock told him. He got to his feet and grimaced, more because of the task lying ahead of him than of the tingling of his dead feet.

***

_Akka_ Lumbarlia Naev grumbled loudly while answering the buzz on her cabin door. It was blasted late and her gout was acting blasting pissed. She was in a foul mood from the previous meeting with the_ blasted_ prissy representatives of the Republic who had _no_ blasted idea how her people reacted to catastrophes like this and - _oh._

The young humanoid stood under the staticky lights on the corridor. His face was impassive for a human, and he had hidden his hands on the too-voluminous sleeves in front of himself. It was a wise move, akka Lumbarlia thought: the ship’s temperature had dropped significantly during the last few hours, as the engineers and repair crew had directed more power to the melted and disfigured engines.

The human bowed, and a thin braid swung over his shoulder. It sparked a recognition: Lumbarlia took an unlit pipe from her mouth and squinted. She had taken him as a page or secretary in training at first; padwad or something. Quiet, scrawny.

“May I come in?” the youngster asked. His voice was soft, not fit for the brawny young man of his age, but Jedi Qui-Gon had seemed to hold him in some value. And you had to give to the youngster, he stood calm under akkan scrutiny. She motioned with her pipe and grunted.

"The boy-king and his uselessly floundering court," some of her kind had started to mock the Republic’s representatives behind their backs after they noticed how they leaned toward this youngster for advice. Nothing ever came out of it. Obviously not; it was not the natural order of things. These people knew nothing of ties and honour of families and elders, or the valory proved in battle and immortalized in songs.

“I’m sorry to bother you this late, akka Naev,” the humanoid said seriously and stood by her sorry excuse of a window. “I have come for you for counsel.”

At least the whelp had some proper respect. Akka Lumbarlia could only wish some of the clan youngsters would come to hear their akkan wisdom before she had to bash their thick heads together.

“It is akkan duty to offer advice, youngster. Speak your mind,” Lumbarlia offered.

“All the representatives on both sides have struggled to find a way for us to come together and trust each other on the face of this catastrophe. I have a feeling you find our customs and social order so different from yours that we, and I as a temporary envoy of the Republic, haven’t been able to convince you of our good intentions. I think I now have a possible new viewpoint to propose.”

Lumbarlia bit the mouthpiece of her unlit pipe in thought. “You certainly have honey smeared on your tongue. What is it that you propose that should convince the captains, despite your young age and your peculiar command structure?”

“I’m willing to swear by what you think is the holiest.”

Akka frowned her bushy eyebrows together and sniffed loudly through her snout. “It is not holy to you, so it makes your oath worthless.”

The young man took a deep breath and let his hands, curled in tight fists, fall on his sides. “In my culture, among the Jedi, what you keep referring to as the holiest goes integrally unspoken. I’m asking you to see how difficult this is, and see the implications that I’m willing to do it nevertheless.” The human raised his chin. A defiant movement, his freckles more prominent now that he was otherwise so pale: all signs of genuine distress, signs that humanoid-studied Lumbarlia could read but knew that few of the other Arrhens could.

“I’m willing to listen to your oath then,” she said.

The young man looked at her painstakingly in the eye. “There is no conspiracy. There is no secret plan to leave your people behind. All this, I swear by my true _aghan_ name. Eternal shame upon me and my line and upon my agha if these words are false. Akka Lumbarlia, I ask you to see...if there was to be some malice intent behind the explosion that I, or any other Republican, knew of, I would never have let my agha near it. Imagine,” the young humanoid looked like he had swallowed something tart, “imagine my shame and sorrow if I had let it happen willingly.”

“I see this truly is difficult for you to put in the words. Why that is so, evades me,” Lumbarlia said. Superstitions and fear and rigid old backs too stiff to bend, she had come to that conclusion over the rumors herself many cycles ago, but to convince the conclave… She was wary not to let any of that to show on her face though.

The young man looked calmer now. “We, the Jedi, are a separate group in the service of representing the Republic. In our... service, these sorts of ties mustn’t compromise or bind us. Why that is so, honourable akka is a discussion of another time and place, I believe.”

“And yet you offer us this oath? Even if it for some unfathomable reason brings shame on you in your incomprehensible tradition?” Lumbarlia ensured. Yes, she believed she saw how this could actually work out. If the youngster could be persuaded to attend the oath in front of those scared fools, and get their pig-headed captain included...

The young Jedi squared his shoulders. “I do”, he confirmed quietly.

***

  
**Two standard weeks later:**

“He is awake again, and more lucid this time. Young sage-master, he is asking after you.”

Somebody shook Obi-Wan’s shoulder in a manner that was probably considered gentle by Arrhen standards. “Huh?” he uttered intelligently and jerked a little distance away. “Not a master”, he muttered yet again, even though he knew it was quite useless; the title had been stuck onto him after the successful treaty between the conclave and the Republic crew.

He wasn’t sure which one was more cringe-worthy, ‘pocket-sized’ or this recent one.

“Jedi Qui-Gon. He is awake again, and requesting you”, the middle-aged Arrhen kindly repeated. Unprecedentedly young sage-master or not, youngsters falling asleep on corridor benches were a common source of nuisance and amusement for the medical staff all around the Galaxy.

“Oh. Oh yes, thank you for telling me. Can I see him now? I know the way.” Obi-Wan rose and wrapped his cloak around himself, ignoring the nervous fluttering in his stomach.

“Yes.”

He tried to leave in a non-hurried, dignified Jedi way.

His world jolted sideways when he pushed the door open: after all these days of quarantine and uncertainty, after standing just outside and on his own, he now stepped in. Qui-Gon seemed to be asleep again. Obi-Wan had just started to look for a seat and swallowing down his disappointment when a rivulet of warmth trickled down their subdued bond. When he looked at his master again, Qui-Gon’s eyes were still closed, but his mouth had curved into a familiar half-smile.

“I have heard heroic tales indeed from the night shift, padawan-mine,” he said hoarsely. The warmth receded from Obi-Wan’s mind, and he had to take a tight hold of himself for not to reach after it like a needy youngling. It had been several days since the bond had been anything more than a static hum.

"Exaggerated in a typical Arrhen song saga fashion, no doubt", Obi-Wan snorted while he took a seat and resisted fidgeting. He felt uncomfortable all of a sudden; he had been so focused on finding a solution to the mission that he hadn't given much thought on how to explain his decisions to his master. Or, little gods have mercy, to the Council itself.

If Qui-Gon had had any extra energy, Obi-Wan was sure his eyes would have glinted with curiosity. Obi-Wan knew he wasn't being exactly subtle with his evading.

"Perhaps so", his master hummed. "That is the reason I would like to hear the way events unfolded from you even before the initial reports to the Council."

He felt morose, he did. Yet, his dependency, his hidden...things had caused some good, hadn't they? And his master was kind, so kind; maybe he would take pity on him and would overlook some things, let him keep his dignity and leave some things unsaid?

Obi-Wan sighed deep, internally, knowing full well that his master and 'overlook' didn't fit into the same sentence, and began his report from ten days previous.

Things went relatively well until he was buzzing akka Lubarlia's door again - he had even managed to hedge away how he found the solution in his meditations because even padawan's meditations were intensely private if they decided so. Qui-Gon's arched brow, even as he listened his eyes closed, told him he hadn't gone unspotted, but his master had let it slide for now.

He could summarize their conversation, curt and to the point, couldn't he? He could focus on the outcome, and not on his way there.

Obi-Wan opened his mouth, and no sound came out. He cleared his throat and tried again. No words.

Piercing blue eyes opened.

"I...the Force told me to use something to convince the Arrhens that I shouldn't… have in me. I'm...I don't understand it, master," he admitted, his voice sounding suddenly young and choked in his ears, and he hated it; he wanted to be _capable_ in his master's eyes, not this juvenile being marinating in un-Jedi like _attachments._ "It got Arrhens listening, helped them to get out of their paranoid headspace, and they allowed us to reach out," he added. He knew he sounded defiant now, mulish, entrenching himself behind the mission accomplishments. Ah well, like master, like padawan one supposed, but Qui-Gon's motivations were noble things, good deeds and the calling of the Living Force when his were...he still didn't know.

His master's face was doing something subtle and complicated under the web of crow feet marking utmost tiredness. Obi-Wan shouldn't have bothered him with this right now.

"When you don't understand the Force, when you don't have the words, what do you do? Listen more, or doubt it?" Qui-Gon asked, and his words were kind but very serious, and that was the worst part. "Try listening to past the surface, like you reveal the true meaning of the ritual past the facade, the true learning behind the play's rulebook."

It was difficult for him, and Qui-Gon knew it. For Obi-Wan, the true meaning laid on the ritual itself, on the structure of the game. To dismantle and reject them meant he had no framework, no words...and that was precisely what his master was trying to make him see.

The Force wasn't playing benign with him tonight, like it never was when he was approaching it with doubt. It took him an inexcusably long time and deeper meditation than he usually could or was even allowed to reach. All the time, his barely-recovered master stood beside him, radiating assurance in the Force like a watchtower.

And he still wasn't getting anywhere, his throat stuck and words absent from him.

Underneath everything else, the faintest, yet purposeful whisper, Qui-Gon coming to his aid. _Shokti._

His master called him 'padawan' often, and it was Obi-Wan's joy. To be called like that in the eyes of the Order and his master was everything there was to be, could ever be.

But there, behind the play and foreignness of the word, hidden in teasing and laughter, lay something that could only be named in a word that the Order didn't possess or couldn't see.

He raised from the meditation too fast, recognized vertigo, and let it sway him forward, towards Qui-Gon's broad chest. A warm, large hand cradled the back of his head, shortly and even a bit hesitant; it wasn't a normal gesture between them.

Obi-Wan knew he couldn't raise his face.

"You were worried. I was worried. We did what the Force demanded from us anyway", Qui-Gon rumbled quietly.

Obi-Wan spelled the Arrhen word without a sound into Qui-Gon's tabards, trusting Qui-Gon to catch it in the Force anyway.

***

**Agha:** (all-)father. Depending on the context, either formal or intimate title, but always respectful. See also akka ((all-)mother). Examples of agglutinative spelling: aghan (genitive case), aghhasta (elative case)

Wormer et. al.: _A Short Guide to Arrhenian language and grammar_

**Shokti** (adj): usually translated 'pocket-sized' or 'small' in Basic. However, this little word is a curious case of nuance: it describes something that the speaker holds very dear, and therefore resides/is kept in the chest pocket, safe and nearest to the speaker's heart. Can be used as a diminutive, especially for children.

Shu'gta, Ghao & Herron: _The elevated game of meanings: a comparative study of Mpelhovian language family and its poetry_


End file.
